Of all the things that companies are trying to flog through Valentine’s Day, which you can apparently show your love through buying, here’s something that you can do that shows actual, proper, deep-down altruism.
You can give your heart! Your actual pound-of-flesh beating heart. No, no, we’re not suggesting someone ripping it out of your chest (though we know that, if you get dumped or stood up tomorrow, that’s how it might feel). What we’re saying is that Heart Transplant UK are giving people the opportunity to send a Valentine’s card to them; in the card, you don’t have to profess love or anything, you just have to say that, should you die, you don’t mind your heart going to one of the people waiting for an organ donation (there are 265 people right now).
No 20-something really wants to think about what happens when she dies, but Stacie Pridden, 24, has to, because her life is in danger. Why? Her heart’s not working properly, so she’s on the waiting list for a heart transplant. That’s her video up there. She says: ‘I would like to think this campaign will get people to sign up to the organ donor register – or at least talk to their family members about it. That is a lot of what holds organ donation back, is that families just don’t know what their relatives would have wanted.’
British Heart Transplant UK says that even though 90% of us support organ donation, only 30% of us will donate because we haven’t signed up to the register.
Obviously one person’s death is tragic, but if some good can come of it, it’s just as obvious to enact that good?
Go to giveyourheart.co.uk to sign up to donate your heart.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.